For the Life of Him
by cognomen
Summary: Starsky and Hutch have Christmas Eve, lonely while their girls are elsewhere.What I originally intended to be a cheerful christmas piece wound up being kind of a melancholy piece about restraint. Faint MM.


It was late - Starsky was always fashionably late in his appearances, delaying long enough to worry anyone who didn't know him well. Ken knew better than to worry for his partner's safety anymore. In fact, the silent arrival gave him more cause to worry than a squeal of tires. Starsky didn't ring the doorbell, he knocked. Hutch read the signs of depression - when Starsky had called half an hour ago, asking to come over, he couldn't have denied it for all the Christmas specials in the world.

"Yeah," He'd said, staring stupidly at the punch-dial on his phone, listening to the strains of depression behind Starsky's merriest voice. "Yeah, come over. We can watch 'It's a Wonderful Life.'

The movie began before Starsky arrived, swaying ever so slightly on his front porch, equipped with a fresh bottle of holiday cheer and a bright smile that could have fooled anyone but the person it was aimed at. He shouldn't have been driving, but he'd made it and now Hutch had to keep him until he either sobered up or Christmas came. He suspected one would not happen before the other, and he didn't mind the company on this particular birthday.

"What'sa matter," Starsky cracked open the bottle, fingers not quite thick with alcohol. "Your girlfriend isn't coming tonight?"

"No, we planned to meet up tomorrow. She's spending Christmas with her folks." Hutch watched alcohol tip toward the lip of the bottle as Starsky let it sag a little, grinning at him. He carefully began to usher Starsky toward the kitchen, and got the hint across easily enough.

"Folks, huh?" Starsky rummaged the familiar kitchen, produced glasses for both. They weren't proper alcohol glasses, cups really, but Starsk wasn't picky when it came to proper tableware. He poured two healthy doses of what the doctor ordered, handed one over to Hutch. "Guess it's just you and me, then. Cheers."

For the life of him, Hutch couldn't remember Starsky's current girlfriend. "Didn't you have plans with Mandy tonight?"

"Mary." Starsky corrected, without malice. Girlfriends came and went, and they'd long since given up being angry at each other for losing track. So long as they remembered each other, that was what mattered. The other cop didn't go into any further detail about why he was here.

Hutch stared pointedly at him while Starsky drank. The sip grew longer, turned into consecutive swallows. He was delaying, taking his time to gather his good spirits again.

"You know how women are, Hutch." Starsky shrugged away the loss of yet another girlfriend with a smile. Hutch knew better. Instead, he resolved to turn the falsity into reality - if he could get Starsky to start smiling for real and stop drinking, his friend would be well again within a matter of days.

Hutch sees right through his failed attempts at cheer. Starsky wasn't attached, but dislikes being alone - so he comes to Hutch of course. Hutch reassures him that never - never-ever. They can't be alone, really. Since Starsky is going to keep showing up grinning on his doorstep every Christmas eve for the rest of his life.

"Yeah, I sure do." Hutch's answer was delayed enough so that Starsky had to stare at him sidelong until he clarified. "Know how women are, Starsk."

Hutch's partner topped their glasses off - his took far longer than Hutch's to refill. It took a glance at the clock to notice that christmas eve had passed to christmas morning minutes before. The winter nights made losing track of time perilously easy - early darkness claimed all sense of evening passing to night to morning again.

Leaving his partner to finish the bottle, he found himself gravitating back toward the front door. The light seemed brighter, coming through the curtained window. He pushed aside the drapes, and found light reflected back from a thousand whirling pinpricks of brilliance against the dark.

Flakes like tiny dancers pirouetting, drowning in the porch lights, brilliant white in yellowed glow scattered by an aging bulb. Spinning until dizzy, they fell to the ground. Powdered white like cocaine scattered by druggies about to be busted. Snow gathered in corners, huddled together. Resting. Eventually, the curtain would go down. The dancers - dirtied - would evaporate to practice as rain until the show next year.

Hutch hoped the curtains would go up as timely as they had this year. The snow gave him a less insulting reason to tell Starsky to stay.

"It's snowin', huh?" Starsky's breath almost startled Hutch, warm and painted with alcohol, and right behind his ear. Drunk as he was, the other man could still sneak with the best of them. Were they both in a lighter mood, Hutch might have joked that it was because his partner was so short. The other cop's body was pressed in close to his, as Starsky craned to see out the window around Hutch.

"Yeah." Hutch's reply was short. Starsky had left his glass and the bottle - presumably empty, Starsky had an incredible talent for making tasty things disappear - in the kitchen. So when his attention turned to the mostly untouched glass in Hutch's hands, fingers beginning to reach, Hutch had only one option.

He drank it. All. It took a good deal of his willpower to disregard the hurt-puppy look his partner gave him. Turning his attention back out to the snow helped. Starsky began to lean on him. Hutch let himself be crushed into the door, the cold glass pane against his forehead not unwelcome in the burning wake of the alcohol's passage. "Why do we do this to ourselves?"

"Women make us masochists." Starsky rumbled, his face buried in Hutch's shoulder. The lean seemed to increase a little, as the more intoxicated of the pair swayed on his feet. He supressed a chuckle, it wouldn't do to encourage Starsky along a path of dark humor that could spiral into real depression. 

"Don't we know better by now?" Hutch said, breath fogging the glass. The snow outside became white blurs underneath an imperfect haze of condensation. The dance ruined, he straightened a bit, steadying his weaving partner on his feet so that he would no longer be crushed against the door.

"You'd figure we would." Starsky rumbled, peeling himself away unsteadily. His eyes, blue and shiny with intoxication, caught the intensified light from the snow. It both highlighted and deepend the color, which stood out most when he smiled, startlingly bright in comparison to his darker complexion. Hutch had always been a sucker for blue eyes and dark hair. "But I dunno if either of us'll ever know what we want."

Hutch knew better. Quick as you please, his fingers recovered Starsky's keys from his tight jean pockets. Grinning, he shook them at his sluggish partner. "The couch folds out. It's too slippery to drive, Starsk." Hutch knew exactly what he wanted, a shame for both of them. "Merry Christmas." 


End file.
